Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1999

by Swami Krishnananda

33. The Universe Is the Yoga of God

(Darshan given in July 1999)

Swamiji: There is nothing in creation which is not connected to the yoga practice. Yoga is a process of inclusiveness, the capacity to absorb all the values of life, which sometimes may look positive, sometimes may look negative. The happiness of life and the grief, the sorrow of life, they are also part of the cosmical concept of yoga practice.

People don't understand what yoga is. They have a wrong notion that yoga is disconnected from the life of the world. It is not like that. The world itself is a yoga of God. God is Himself practising yoga in the form of this multitudinous variety of the world of manifestation.

It is a great art of God, also. You know what is natyam, dance? God is dancing in the form of this world. Have you heard of Lord Siva's dance? This is Lord Siva's dance, what you are seeing. Such hot sun, such cold wind, so much rain, so much drought, so many are happy, so many are dying, so many are born – these all look like very strange things which we cannot reconcile among themselves, but they are all well-knit beautifully like a pattern of fabric in the concept of God.

So yoga is associated with Ayurveda, and it is associated with allopathy also, it is associated with Unani, it is associated with Tibetan treatment, it is associated with the village treatment. In Kerala especially, there are village types of treatment. They will only crush some leaves, the paste of those leaves will be applied to the body, and that is part of healing. Anything that keeps a thing wholesome and not fractionalised, and produces a sensation of well-being in oneself under any circumstance positively – 'positively' is the word to be underlined. That which is positive directs itself to God-realisation finally.

The whole universe is the yoga of God. God is meditating, and He is visualising the entire structure of the sun, moon, stars, etc. There is a great prayer in the Vedas, called Purusha Sukta. Purusha Sukta is the hymn of the Cosmic Being – how the Cosmic Being thinks, how the Cosmic Being behaves, how the Cosmic Being acts, how the Cosmic Being sees. Anyone who can think like God, see like God and hear things like God, and appreciates and associates himself with anything as God Himself does, such a person is called a God-man – God-man, God-woman, anything. Nowadays we are making a distinction between man and woman, and all that. There is no man, no woman. It is just a human being, a human being of a supernal nature, which is a kind of androgyne, both man and woman or neither man or woman, either way. You cannot say God is a human man. He is not even a human being. It is some mysterious inclusiveness of cosmic apperception where one perceives oneself only.

What does God perceive? Before the world was created, there was no world. God was. At that time, what was God seeing? What was God seeing, what was God thinking, what was God beholding before He created the universe? He was beholding Himself. And from that great Himself the universe has projected itself; therefore, the world also is God only.

You have come from Delhi, Agra, this place, that place. You are holding a camera in your hand. All this is the work of God. The universal centrality is prompting you to come here and put questions of this kind, and prompting me also to speak in this fashion. If you go on thinking like this, you will be a citizen of the universe. You will belong to the kingdom of heaven. You won't belong to Delhi, you won't be a little girl, you won't be a man, you won't be a woman. You will be a citizen of the cosmos. That is the implication of this great mantra, a prayer that I referred to as the Purusha Sukta. 'Purusha Sukta' means the hymn of the Great Being.

Everything is yourself only. That is called yoga. Everything is yourself. Go on thinking like that. Everything is yourself. Listen to me. If God is everything, yourself, as a child of God, also is everything. Affirm in your consciousness: “As a child of God, I am everything as God Himself is.” This is yoga, and inside this yoga you can have Ayurveda, or any kind of medical system, whatever you want.